Defiant tone set from start of last Parliament

FROM the outset of its five-year mandate in July 1994, the fourth directly elected European Parliament refused to be taken for granted. Angered at being effectively sidelined in the selection of the new European Commission president, it endorsed Jacques Santer’s appointment by a paltry 22 votes.

That gesture of defiance ran through most of its term in office. It continued with the introduction of US Congress-style public hearings six months later to grill all 19 would-be Commissioners which seriously embarrassed a handful of them and culminated in the unprecedented events which forced Santer’s team to resign en masse in mid-March rather than be voted out of office by MEPs.

What had been regarded for more than 40 years as a theoretical parliamentary power, the right to dismiss the entire Commission, had effectively become reality.

No wonder that as the directly elected Parliament moves into the 21st year, the leader of the European United Left Group Alonso Puerta said earlier this month: “We have graduated from short trousers. We are now wearing long trousers and are an adult and genuine parliament.”

Part of that progression into adulthood came from the way MEPs used their traditional budgetary powers to investigate ever more rigorously the way the Commission manages annual EU expenditure. This raised the political priority of the fight against fraud and strengthened the Parliament’s authority over the Union’s executive body.

That process was accelerated by the two ad hoc committees of inquiry – on transit fraud and on the BSE mad cow crisis – which the Parliament established using its new Maastricht Treaty powers. Through these two committees, MEPs developed the new tactic of summoning and cross-examining Commissioners, outside experts and senior officials from relevant EU institutions and governments to try to get to the bottom of the two particularly complex issues.

In their own way, each consolidated the Parliament’s right to summon witnesses. That practice is now routinely followed by the specialised permanent committees. In addition, the Parliament has successfully extended its role as a forum for debate and information by organising public hearings with leading experts in particular fields to examine the legislative implications of key developments.

The past five years have seen a major extension of the Parliament’s legislative powers. The wider public first woke up to this in March 1995 when MEPs unexpectedly rejected draft legislation on the patenting of biotechnological inventions. The decision dismayed many, but it played a major role in establishing the Parliament’s legislative identity. After several amendments to take MEPs’ concerns on board, the directive was eventually approved three years later.

But it would be wrong to think that MEPs have only used their co-decision powers negatively to amend or reject draft legislation. In the vast majority of cases, they have fine-tuned EU measures and only four of the 66 separate cases where they initially disagreed with governments ended in stalemate, killing off the draft proposals.

Their successes range from turning a voluntary agreement on the level of car exhaust emissions into binding legislation to ensuring that in future all lifts are designed taking the needs of the disabled into account.

It has not, however, all been plain sailing. The Parliament itself has been criticised for not spending public money properly, particularly when it comes to MEPs’ allowances and, to the vast majority of electors, the institution sill seems very remote.